Christmas Present, Christmas Past
by Chenanceou
Summary: Stand alone for the Friends Series. Spike has his first Christmas since 1880.


**Title:** Christmas Present, Christmas Past

**By:** Chen

**Disclaimer:** All belongs to ME (Grr! Argh!), not me. William's little rhyme is by the most Glorificus Colleen H.

**A/N:** This stand alone takes place in the Charleyverse, a couple of months after _Friends Bound By Blood 5_. If you haven't been following the Friends Series I'm afraid this will make little sense to you.

Spike and Charley spend their first Christmas together.

A big thank you to Kelly, Chris and Colleen who took the time to read it and help out.

For Kimi, who got me to write it.

**=****#****=******

They went into the department store and Spike immediately started piling the cart with all kinds of candy, enough tinsel to cover their place from top to bottom, and an oversized wreath for their door. But when he started eyeing the gigantic Santa Claus with reindeers, Charlie had to put a stop to the madness. 

"No." The tone of her voice was final.

"Please? It would look brilliant on the roof!" His eyes had gotten that 'poor boy lost' look he used on her whenever he wanted to change her mind. "You don't have to do a thing. It will only take me a minute to get it up."

'Don't give in. Don't give in,' she told herself. Then she looked at the blue puppy eyes and melted. How could she say no? "Okay, but if you fall from the bloody roof don't come complaining to me." She had barely finished before he hugged her and picked up the slip for the offensively kitschy display. 

They continued making their way down the aisles, looking for decorations for the tree he had insisted on picking up last night. That had been the start of all this. The beginning of being sucked against her will into the bizarre world of the vampire who loved Christmas. 

She had tried to explain to him that she never celebrated Christmas. At least, not since she had left home. Unfortunately Spike hadn't paid much attention to her, too engrossed into picking the perfect tree for their living room. She had stood there brooding in silence while he enumerated to the clearly tired tree seller all the criteria *their* tree had to meet. 

Rats, how she hated the holidays! Christmas with her parents had been the kind of occasion you would never see on a Christmas special. It had been a world of resentment, bitterness and repressed rage, fueled by too much drinking and too many battling relatives exploding just around dessert time. The one that stuck with Charlie the most was when on her fourth Christmas, her mom, whose voice slurred so badly even the four year old Charlie had figured out the woman was drunk, had informed her quite plainly there was no such stupid thing like Santa. 

When she had left for college, Charlie had been glad to let the holidays just slip by. Never going home, hardly making the effort to hide her dislike of cards and what she called 'pre-fabricated' cheer that infected most people, she had done just fine. Okay, so she always got depressed just around the 23rd, but it went away with the new year and soon all was good in her world again. Until the next year.

Seeing Spike so excited about it had brought out the worst in her, though. She loved him to pieces, but that wasn't making the whole experience any easier on her nerves. It had been almost two hours since they had entered the store and his excitement hadn't lost one iota of momentum. She closed her eyes and wished with every fiber of her being for a cigarette and a very strong drink. 

"What do you think, Charlie girl? Silver star or gold?" Spike was holding up two monumentally large and impossibly ornate stars for the top of the tree.

"I don't care. Whatever you like best, hon." She looked at his wounded expression and felt a little pang of guilt. Reaching to the shelf she picked up an even larger angel, with white wings. "How about an angel?"

"No, I don't want a stupid angel! I want a star." 

"Well then pick a freaking star already! I give up, you know! I've bloody had it! I'm going home." She lifted her bag from the cart without looking up, already hating herself for blowing up at him. She wanted to stop and apologize, wanted more than anything to hug him and tell him she was being a bitch. But she didn't.  It was as if she were on auto-rage-pilot and all she wanted to do was implode. She made her way out of the store, yanked her purse open, and got a cigarette out. Inhaling deeply, she took one last look at the store before making her way home.

**=****#****=******

"Are you going to explain to me what that was all about? Because I'm just a tad confused..." Spike shut the door with his foot, balancing the overstuffed bags he held.

She was still too ashamed of the way she had behaved to face him, so instead she stared at the tip of the cigarette. She forced the anger down, took another drag and tried to organize her thoughts so what she had to say would at least make some sense to him. "I'm sorry. It's not your fault, hon. It's me, and I tried to tell you." She couldn't keep a little reproach from her voice. "I hate the holidays, okay? Have for as long as I can remember."

Spike put down the bags and sat next to her. "So it wasn't about the angel?"

Charlie looked at him confused. "Angel? What angel? Oh, the one for the tree. No, hon! Of course not."

Spike was relieved. When Charlie had walked out on him, he had been sure it had been some female irrational need for angels. She had wanted the angel and he had refused, just out of some silly issues. "So what is it, Charlie? It's not like you to be so..."

"Bitchy?" She snorted.

"I was going to say moody, but I like yours better." He lit a cigarette and waited. 

"I was trying to tell you last night, remember? When you went to pick the tree? I just don't like the holidays. They make me all..." Her voice drifted while she tried to pinpoint exactly *how* they made her feel, and when she failed to find the word, just shook her head in desperation. "It's like all of a sudden my skin gets too tight on me and everything rubs me the wrong way." She sighed heavily and shrugged, better just tell him. "Christmas with my family was a living nightmare, hon. I guess I'm somehow still stuck there."

Spike's eyes softened considerably as the missing pieces of the puzzle fell into place. "So that's it, uh?" He drew her into a hug. "Sod them, luv! I'm your family now, right?"

She giggled at the expletive, imagining her parents' faces if she really had told them to sod off. "Yes, William. You are my family." She wrinkled her nose when a thought struck her. "This *is* your first Christmas since–" 

"Since I was turned? Yes." He let out a self-deprecating laugh. "Got a bit carried away, didn't I, luv?"

"No, hon. I was so selfish, all wrapped up in my own little time capsule of dysfunctional Christmas past and..." She hugged him and said, at last able to look him in the eyes, "I'm so sorry. You should have the best Christmas ever."

"*We* should. And we will. It will be just like mother used to make it!" He caught himself and his eyes went wide. 

Mother? William's mother, he quickly corrected himself. Except he could smell the pudding she had always baked for Christmas, and the memories were so vivid he could recall minute details of the last Christmas he had spent as a human. His sister had given him a beautiful painting she had made of them. He could hear her shrieking with pleasure when she opened her present and found the leather bound journal he had made her. She had proudly read aloud the horrible poem he had written on the first page. He still remembered how it started– "Christmas morning is finally here, I wish my dear sister much good cheer..."

"William? Are you feeling all right?" Charlie's voice pulled him reluctantly back to the present, for he still wasn't ready to let go of the happiness that the memories had brought him.

"Yes. More than all right." His voice was little more than a whisper as he tried to clear his head. That had been then, this was now. It was something that applied to both he and Charlie. The past was there, and even if it was more alive in him than it had ever been before, his life was here. With Charlie. He smiled at her, and she returned his smile, this time letting its warmth reach her eyes.

Spike got up and held his hand to Charlie, who took it. He held her by the shoulders for a minute, letting the image of his sister linger before him before at last letting her go. "C'mon, girl. There's a Santa outside waiting to go up on the roof!"

"You didn't!" Charlie said in mock outrage.

Spike smirked and tilted his head in what was one of her favorite quirks of his. "Didn't I? Wait until you see Frosty!"

**T****h****e**** End**


End file.
